"Short story" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a teacher and radical advocate for civil rights. She attended the Academy for Negro Youth and was educated as a teacher. She became a professional lecturer, activist, suffragette, poet, essayist, novelist, and the author of the first published short story written by an African-American. Her work spanned more ...
— Minnie's Sacrifice • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... Amphitryon—both so altered in the interpretation that they seem more like originals than translations; prose tales that are admirable examples of this form—The Marquise of O., The Earthquake in Chili, and the first part of the masterly short story Michael Kohlhaas; and the recasting of the unique comedy The Broken Jug. Finally he attempted another great drama in verse, Penthesilea, embodying in the old classical story the tragedy of his own desperate struggle for Guiscard, and ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... his criticism on Othello, introduces the following narrative, to which allusion is made in our remarks.—"The short story I am going to tell is a just warning to those of jealous honour to look about them, and begin to possess their souls as they ought; for no man of spirit knows how terrible a creature he is, till he ...
— The Revenge - A Tragedy • Edward Young
... his face an expression of "anger and dismay," the elements—as I choose to think—of man's revolt against imprisonment in the flesh. It is worth while to note that by another statement, the same problem is posed and solved in the short story called The Country ...
— H. G. Wells • J. D. Beresford
... the French have always delighted and in which they have always excelled, from the days of the jongleurs and the trouveres, past the periods of La Fontaine and Voltaire, down to the present. The conte is a tale, something more than a sketch, it may be, and something less than a short story. In verse it is at times but a mere rhymed anecdote, or it may attain almost to the direct swiftness of a ballad. The Canterbury Tales are contes, most of them, if not all; and so are some of the Tales ...
— Ten Tales • Francois Coppee
... the solitary hours in weaving crude fancies around people who for any reason interested me. I usually had a mental serial running, to which I returned when it was my mood; but I had never written even a short story. In October, 1871, I was asked to preach for a far uptown congregation in New York, with the possibility of a settlement in view. On Monday following the services of the Sabbath, the officers of the church were kind enough to ask me to spend a week with them and ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... of the fables was based upon the combination of two ideas—that of the stiff dry moral apologue of AEsop, and that of the short story. By far the most important of these two elements was the latter. With the old fabulists the moral was the excuse for the fable; with La Fontaine it was the other way round. His moral, added in a conventional tag, or even, sometimes, ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... is time, as it is a short story," said Good Bird. And White Cloud listened to the tale of the lazy katydid and the hard-working ant while the canoe moved slowly across the ...
— Two Indian Children of Long Ago • Frances Taylor
... You couldn't pry those fastenings away with dynamite. When I find a hole in my stockings I'm tickled to death, because it's something to mend. And read? Everything from the Rules of the House tacked up on the door to spelling out the French short story in the back of the Swell Set Magazine. It's getting on my nerves. Do you know what I do Sunday mornings? No, you don't. Well, I go to church, that's what I do. And I get green with envy watching the other women there ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber
... The short story was soon told. The hardy fellow made light of what he had done, but the superintendent, who kept his eyes fixed on his face, saw the sparkle of tears that the speaker could not keep back. It was hard for any one of the three to believe that only a brief while before they were ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... chapter of our short story I will venture to run rapidly over a few months so as to explain how the affairs of Bowick arranged themselves up to the end of the current year. I cannot pretend that the reader shall know, as he ought to be made to know, the future fate and ...
— Dr. Wortle's School • Anthony Trollope
... and there I received my first advice, my first thrill of exultation. "Presently, and probably, and with perseverance," he said, "you will succeed in literature, and if you will remember now, that to write a good novel is a very considerable achievement. Years of short story-writing is the best apprenticeship for you. Write and re-write, and spare no pains." I thanked him, and I went home with tears in my eyes of gratitude and consolation, though my big story had been declined with thanks. But I did not write again. I put away my MS., and ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... names from the foreign list just given are synonymous with the best fiction of the period. Yet the short story as practised in its native home continues to excel the short story written in other lands. The English, the Russian, the French, it is being contended in certain quarters, write better literature. They do not, therefore, write ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... writer of this introduction, then a young actor, assisted in the stage management. One of the actors was Gustav Wied, a Danish playwright and novelist, whose exquisite art since then has won him European fame. In the audience was Ola Hansson, a Swedish novelist and poet who had just published a short story from which Strindberg, according to his own acknowledgment on playbill and title-page, had taken the name and the theme ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg
... instinct, pursue it. Of course we have no right to claim our happiness at the expense of others. But your father is safe for the present. No matter what your talent, you will not know enough, nor have had sufficient bare practice with your pen, to write even a short story of first-rate merit for ten years to come. You may count it a blessing that various causes are preventing you from rushing into print. At the end of that period your father will be ten years older. ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... had news from the Jarl, and strange enough it was. My father came back two days afterwards and told us all, and so I may as well make a short story of it. The ways of Gunnar Kirkeban had been his end, for a certain Viking chief, a Norseman, had wintered in Wales during the past winter, and there he had heard from the Welsh of the wrongs that they had suffered at ...
— Havelok The Dane - A Legend of Old Grimsby and Lincoln • Charles Whistler
... to take more ingenuity than I possess to hide the authorship; that's why I want you to carry the burden. The publisher says the public demand to know who Merlin Shepperd is. And three magazines want a short story by the author of 'The Gray Knight of Picardy.' I'll send you the letters. That enterprising Phil has an uncomfortable habit of running through my desk and I'm likely to forget to lock up these things. She thought ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... An old, short story is this! A glance, a trembling, a sigh, A gaze in the eyes, a kiss— Why will it not ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... "We've got round to Dryfoos again. I thought I could cut a long story short, but I seem to be cutting a short story long. If you're not in a ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... intellectual superior. Indeed, if horses had brains no better than those of hens, but proportionately larger, they would not be drawing wagons, and carrying men upon their backs, but would be lecturing to women's clubs, and holding chairs in universities, and writing essays on the Development of the Short Story ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... looked searchingly, almost suspiciously, at Lomaque, as he put the question. "All?" he repeated. "Yours is a short story, indeed, my good friend! Perhaps you ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... Marie's death, the tragedy of these three moves to its climax in the forest is the work of an artist in emotion, such as by this time we know Mr. Walpole to be. The trouble was that I had at the moment no wish for artistry. To sum up, I am left with the impression that an uncommonly good short story rather tiresomely distracted my attention from some ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol 150, February 9, 1916 • Various
... was an editor of a magazine who had certain ideas concerning short stories. This is not wonderful, for editors have such ideas; and when they find a short story which corresponds, they accept it with joy and pay good sums for it. This particular editor believed that a short story should be realistic. "Let us have things as they are!" he was accustomed to cry to his best friend, or the printer's devil, or the office cat, whichever ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White
... a story about three people like Sid Hahn and Mizzi Markis and Wallie Ascher you find yourself pawing around among the personalities helplessly. For the three of them are what is known in newspaper parlance as national figures. One n.f. is enough for any short story. Three would swamp a book. It's like one of those plays advertised as having an all-star cast. By the time each luminary has come on, and been greeted, and done his twinkling the play has faded into the background. You can't see the ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... the midst of a bewildering quantity of play-publication and production. The one-act play in particular, chiefly represented in this volume, appears to be taking the place of that rather squeezed sponge, the short story, in the favor of the reading public. Of course, this tendency has its reaction in schoolrooms. One even hears of high-school classes which attempt to keep up with the entire output of such dramas in English readings. If this is not merely an apologue, it is certainly ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various
... was unalloyed pleasure in the composition of that first story, and the knowledge that it was to be actually printed and published, and not to be declined with thanks by adamantine magazine editors, like a certain short story which I had lately written, and which contained the germ of "Lady Audley's Secret." Indeed, at this period of my life, the postman's knock had become associated in my mind with the sharp sound of a rejected MS. dropping through the open letter-box on to the floor of the hall, while my heart seemed ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various
... be sought. It was not until about the middle of the nineteenth century that modern short stories, novels and plays began to be written on anything like a scale worthy of note. The earliest of these were romantic in spirit, though most of them had a realistic tinge. With Realism, the short story came into its own in the eighties and nineties of the last century. This trend came like a fresh current to take its place side by side with Romanticism, without, however, ousting it from the literary scene. But owing to the realistic technique and the tragic endings of much in the ancient ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... roused in me, by a woman practising any of the fine arts—except the art of writing. That she should write a few little poems or pensees, or some impressions of a trip in a dahabieh as far as (say) Biskra, or even a short story or two, seems to me not wholly amiss, even though she do such things for publication. But that she should be an habitual, professional author, with a passion for her art, and a fountain-pen and an agent, and sums down in advance of royalties on sales ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... short stories which are not intended to be translated into English. In the Second Year an almost equal amount of time is given to reading, conversation, translation, and grammar. Particular stress is laid upon the study of verbs. A short story or description forms the basis of each lesson, illustrating a grammatical principle and affording an easy and pleasant subject for conversation. The more difficult aspects of French grammar and syntax are treated in the Third ...
— Contes et lgendes - 1re Partie • H. A. Guerber
... Paul Potter, being in Paris, dropped in at that chamber of horrors, the Grand Guignol, in the Rue Chaptal. There they saw "Mademoiselle Fifi," a playlet lasting less than half an hour, adapted by the late Oscar Metenier from Guy de Maupassant's short story. It was the tale of a young Prussian officer who gets into a French country house during the war of 1870, abuses the aristocrats who live there, shoots out the eyes of the family portraits, entertains at supper a number of loose French girls from Rouen, and is shot by one of the girls ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... mother, is as good as another to listen to good advice. Besides, I am only talking of one of my friends. 'Tis but a short story, Fabien, and instructive. I will give it you in very few words. My friend was very young and enthusiastic. He was on his way through the galleries of Italy, brush in hand, his heart full of the ceaseless song of youth in holiday. The world ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... de femme,' This story of a jealous husband's walling up his wife's lover in a closet of her chamber is as dramatic a piece of writing as Balzac ever did, and is almost if not quite as perfect a short story as any that has since been written in France. 'La Maison du chat-qui-pelote' has been mentioned already on account of its importance in the evolution of Balzac's realism, but while a delightful novelette, it is hardly great, its charm coming ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... speak in that thankful tone. It's a horrid little paper—all brown-paper patterns and advice to the lovelorn and puzzles. I do a short story for it every week, under various names. A duke or an earl goes with each story. ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... to give a complete listing of his magazine stories here. Adventure Magazine began publication in November 1910, but the earliest issue that I have for reference is that of August 1911. This contains a short story by Mundy, "The Phantom Battery." By this time he was publishing five to eight short stories per year. These early stories were mostly about the British Army and the most important was his "The Soul of A Regiment," (February 1913) a tale of native troops in the ill-fated ...
— Materials Toward A Bibliography Of The Works Of Talbot Mundy • Bradford M. Day, Editor
... account, to the people of the coast; but the supply proving larger than the demand, and having no customers on board the frigate but Lieutenant Selvagee, he was now carrying home more than a third of his original stock. To make a short story of it, this functionary, being called upon in secret, was readily prevailed upon to part with a dozen bottles, with whose contents the intoxicated party had ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... to suffering which gives distinction to this charming book. Less happy perhaps and much less in the picture are the episodes learnt only at second hand and suggesting the technique and unreality of the imagined short story. ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 152, February 21st, 1917 • Various
... find the time to copy out the orchestra parts of my overture to Faust, which I was still hoping to hear at the Conservatoire; and by the way of counteracting the depression produced by this humiliating occupation, I wrote a short story, Eine Pilgerfahrt zu Beethoven (A Pilgrimage to Beethoven), which appeared in the Gazette Musicale, under the title Une Visite a Beethoven. Schlesinger told me candidly that this little work had created quite ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... later the manuscript was polished and typewritten, ready for the test. Spurlock felt very well pleased with himself. To have written a short story in a week was ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... that a good many different people will get into my short story. They get into a short time, in such a summer holiday, and so why not? At any rate, I must tell ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... hold down on "The Readers' Corner." Isn't an eight and nine-page section a bit too much? A short story has been suggested—good idea. Why not limit it to a maximum of, ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... the other. "No, Mr. Farrington, I have found nothing. I don't think it is my game really—investigating and discovering people. I'm a pretty good short story writer but a pretty rotten detective. Of course, it is awfully kind of you to ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace
... shame, Sylvia; you'll bowl over everybody. Roy Beaumont will say you look mythological. Oh, and poor Mr. Ridokanaki! You'll refuse him to-night, I suppose! What fun it must be to be a pretty girl going about refusing people in conservatories—like a short story in a magazine! I've forgotten how I did it. In a year, darling? Quite. I say, have I overdone the dix-huitieme business? Do I look like a fancy ball? Pass me a hairpin, dear. No, don't. I suppose you know that Chetwode has never seen this ...
— The Twelfth Hour • Ada Leverson
... match exactly of his own size to meddle with, who should only have the odds of truth and honesty; which as I take it, would be an effectual way to silence him for ever. Upon this occasion, I cannot forbear a short story of a fanatic farmer who lived in my neighbourhood, and was so great a disputant in religion, that the servants in all the families thereabouts, reported, how he had confuted the bishop and all his clergy. I had then a footman who was fond of reading the Bible, and I borrowed ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... Maupassant of modern short story writers ... movie scenarist ... witty contributor to books of American Comedies ... expert and thoroughly experienced newspaper man, Jack Lait makes the Home Journal (Saturday Magazine) the most interesting and best read ...
— What's in the New York Evening Journal - America's Greatest Evening Newspaper • New York Evening Journal
... imagined that I was in love for an hour, for a day. I had foolishly yielded to the influence of surrounding circumstances. I allowed myself to be beguiled by a mirage of Dawn. Would you like me to tell you this short story? ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... establish a more than creditable reputation. His prose, if never to be called masterly, may generally be called good and pure: its occasional pedantries and pretentions are rather signs of the century than faults of the author; and he can tell a story, especially a short story, as well as if not better than many a better-known writer. I fear, however, that it is not the poetical quality of his undramatic verse which can ever be said to make it worth reading: it is, as far as I know, of the very homeliest homespun ever turned out by the very humblest of workmen. ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... winter. He ground away at the bookkeeping—he was more proficient at it, but he hated it as heartily as ever—and wrote a good deal of verse and some prose. For the first time he sold a prose article, a short story, to a minor magazine. He wrote long letters to Helen and she replied. She was studying hard, she liked her work, and she had been offered the opportunity to tutor in a girls' summer camp in Vermont during ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... write down all the surging thoughts that filled my brain this would have to be a Novel instead of a Short Story. And I am not one who beleives in beginning the life of Letters with a long work. I think one should start with breif Romanse. For is not Romanse itself but breif, the thing of an hour, at least ...
— Bab: A Sub-Deb • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... scamp as he was, and when the time came that he had something pleasant to communicate, it was too late, as his father was no more, and his only brother (your father) was gone nobody knew where. Well, to make a short story of it, that chap, your uncle, was knocked about in the world, sometimes up and sometimes down, but at last found himself pretty strong upon his legs, and then made up his mind to come back to Old England, where he found nobody to care for him, and went ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... an incident the other day, which I think is a good deal in your way, for introduction either into a long or short story. Dr. Sutherland and Dr. Monro went over St. Luke's with me (only last Friday), to show me some distinctly and remarkably developed types of insanity. Among other patients, we passed a deaf and dumb man, now afflicted with incurable madness too, of whom they said that it was only when his ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... short story of this unpleasant affair, I have watched your promenades in front of Miss Pillbody's school three afternoons in succession. I will spare you the details, though, so clearly are your movements back and ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... offered an alluring prize for a short story, and Tig wrote one, and rewrote it, making alterations, revisions, annotations, and interlineations which would have reflected credit upon Honore; Balzac himself. Then he wrought all together, with splendid brevity and dramatic ...
— The Shape of Fear • Elia W. Peattie
... She raised a row, but what was the use? She told me that she'd rather have him at home with the servant playing poker than at the opera where he was once seen to bet on the cards turned up by Calve in the third act of 'Carmen.' I've written the thing for my paper and I mean to turn it into a short story some day." Every one had tales to relate of the meanness, rapacity, dissipation and extravagance of the prima donna's husband from Adelina Patti to Mitwindt, the German singer who regularly committed her husband to jail at the beginning ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... To-day and Yesterday Series. Short Stories of To-day and Yesterday Series. Reprinted from other volumes. The Sword of Wood. Short Story. Edition de Luxe, Signed. Reprinted ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... in the same place. By almost incredible exertions of courage and obstinacy he wrote a novel, which was published, and sold 2,580 copies the first year. His royalties on this amounted to $348.30—not one-third as much, he reflected sadly, as Irvin Cobb would receive for a single short story. He even did a little private tutoring at his home, giving the sons of some of his friends lessons in ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... C.S.S.U. attached to their competition was that "the tale must be drawn as far as possible from actual life, and must vividly depict the evils of gambling, setting forth its ruinous effects sociably and morally on the young people of our land." Perhaps the following short story may serve as a model to the candidates. This romance must be considered "outside the competition." Here ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., October 11, 1890 • Various
... commenting on this fact says: "Bravo the young Americans! Nothing in today's battle narrative from the front is more exhilarating than the account of their fight at Cantigny. It was clean cut from beginning to end, like one of their countrymen's short stories, and the short story of Cantigny is going to expand into a full-length novel which will write the doom of the Kaiser and Kaiserism. Cantigny will one day ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... don't feel that you can afford to make such a heavy investment as I have suggested, why don't you put your material into a short story? ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers
... chain of historic cities which stretches from Milan to Venice, in which the very names—Brescia, Verona, Mantua, Padua—are an ornament to one's phrase; but I should have to draw upon recollections now three years old and to make my short story a long one. Of Verona and Venice only have I recent impressions, and even to these must I do hasty justice. I came into Venice, just as I had done before, toward the end of a summer's day, when the shadows begin to lengthen and the light to glow, and found that the attendant ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... "'Tis a short story. Oi can't tell ye much, owin' to orders from the old gent hisself. He came shortly after th' death of the first Bar, Senestro's brother. Seems there was some rumpus aboot th' old Rhamda Avec, which same Oi always kept away from—him as was goin' ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... phase of the French Revolution on his head, and in The Last Days of the French Monarchy (CHAPMAN AND HALL) he has apparently done so. I cannot think it will add to his reputation. It will be something if it doesn't hurt it. He has taken a short story, and by a process of dextrous padding and the practice of a method, which is becoming an obsession with him, of going deep into the obvious with much industry and circumstance, he has contrived, with the addition of a number of plates—some ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. CL, April 26, 1916 • Various
... that it is not strong enough to kill an animal of the size and strength of a man. The first have erred by lending a too willing ear to the marvellous and believing assertions without sufficient proof. The following short story points out the necessity of a ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... magazines. He is said to receive ten cents a word, and this unusual price is warranted by the eager demand for his stories, of which the reading public is very fond. However, the unknown author does not fare so badly. The sum of from thirty to fifty dollars usually remitted for a short story pays the beginner a better recompense, for the actual time he is engaged upon the work, than any other ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces on Vacation • Edith Van Dyne
... excellent definition of fictitious narrative (in The Victorian Age in Literature) is that essentially "the story is told . . . for the sake of some study of the difference between human beings." This alone is enough to exculpate him of the charge of writing novels. The Chestertonian short story is also in its way unique. If we applied the methods of the Higher Criticism to the story just described, we might base all manner of odd theories upon the defeat (inter alios) of Burrows, a big and burly youth, by Basil Grant, aged sixty at the very least, and armed with antimacassars. ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West
... the saddest little voice pipe out: 'Dear-ie me! Dear-ie me!' and there on the sunny side of a branch perched a lonesome bit of yellowish down. I went up to see what it was, and found dear little Thistle Goldfinch! He was very glad to see me, and soon told his short story. Through the summer Papa and Mamma Goldfinch and all the brothers and sisters had a fine time, singing together, fluttering over thistletops, or floating through the balmy air. But when 'little Jack Frost walked through the trees,' Papa ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... effect, neither too many nor too few. The treatment had to be mainly provocative—an appeal in some cases by very coarse means indeed to very coarse nerves, in others by finer devices addressed to senses more tickle o' the sere. And so grew up that unsurpassed and hardly matched product the French short story, where, if it is in perfection, hardly a word is thrown away, and not a word ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... just finished a short story called Gentleman Jim, which I am going to send to Scribner's; very likely it will get overlooked and lost. I received, not long ago, a letter from Mr. Cady [2] about Greylock, which he had just read. It was a gratification to both my husband and myself, ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... well enough for once in a way," answered his uncle, "and if you should get into conversation with the captain, mark what I tell you: If you get off with the short story, the Swedish one, you have nothing to do but alternately to nod and shake your head. You'll soon pick up ...
— Tales of Two Countries • Alexander Kielland
... satire, very little feeling, no simplicity. It is a combination of qualities which serves eminently well for satire, for journalism, and for paper warfare of all kinds, but which is much less suitable to the novel or short story, for cleverness is not poetry, and the novel is still within the domain of poetry, although on the frontier. The vague discomfort aroused in one by these epigrammatic productions is due probably to a confusion of kinds. Ambiguity of style keeps one ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... another the second part of this story was never forthcoming, and my copy arriving in the nick of time was used to stop the gap. It brought me a regular commission, and month by month thereafter, for quite a considerable time, I contributed a short story to the Belgravia Magazine. Very early in the history of this connection a curious accident happened. I was looking forward to a cheque for seventeen guineas and it came to me as a surprise when, from paymasters ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... very short story," said Bartram, now entirely calm, as he leaned against his desk and folded his arms. "Like every other man with any brains, I've always been interested in religion, intellectually, and have had to ...
— All He Knew - A Story • John Habberton
... and poetry, crude or skilful in dialect, uneven in tone and treatment, they constantly reward one with earthy imagery, salty phrase, and sensitive detail. In their unconscious art, exhibited in many a fine and powerful short story, they are a contribution to the realistic writing of the Negro. Beneath all the surface contradictions and exaggerations, the fantasy and flattery, they possess an essential truth and humanity which surpasses as it ...
— Slave Narratives, Administrative Files (A Folk History of - Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves) • Works Projects Administration
... man, I had projected a lecture on the Hoosier folk-speech, and had even printed during the war a little political skit in that dialect in a St. Paul paper. So far as I know, nothing else had ever been printed in the Hoosier. Under the spur of Taine's argument, I now proceeded to write a short story wholly in the dialect spoken in my childhood by rustics on the north side of the Ohio River. This tale I called "The Hoosier School-Master." It consisted almost entirely of an autobiographical narration in dialect by Mirandy Means of ...
— The Hoosier Schoolmaster - A Story of Backwoods Life in Indiana • Edward Eggleston
... modest intellect that gave me the subject of this scene have the honor of it!" This, however, was not the first time he had honored her by dedicating one of his works to her, for in 1835 he inscribed to "Almae Sorori" a short story, ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd
... Washington, hard at work on my history, but all the time my mind was working, almost unconsciously, on my new fictional problems, "After all, I am a novelist," I wrote to Fuller, and I found time even in the midst of my historical study to compose an occasional short story of Colorado or Mexico. ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... in this volume, "The Lagoon," the last in order, is the earliest in date. It is the first short story I ever wrote and marks, in a manner of speaking, the end of my first phase, the Malayan phase with its special subject and its verbal suggestions. Conceived in the same mood which produced "Almayer's Folly" and "An Outcast of the Islands," it ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... short story, lad. When I went overboard from the rowboat, I caught hold of some of the wreckage from the schooner. This was still fast to the deck, and by hauling myself in I soon got on board again. As I had no boat, I remained ...
— The Rover Boys on Land and Sea - The Crusoes of Seven Islands • Arthur M. Winfield
... dismissed by political opponents from office, and instantly he was himself again, and wrote his most popular and, perhaps, his best book. The evolution of his work was from the prime notion (which he confessed that he loved best when "strange") to the short story, and thence to the full and rounded novel. All his work was leisurely. All his language was picked, though not with affectation. He did not strive to make a style out of the use of odd words, or of familiar words in odd places. ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... and descriptive powers of sound. A race of literary and theatrical musicians appeared; and Meyerbeer, the first of them, made an extraordinary impression. The frankly delirious description of his Robert the Devil in Balzac's short story entitled Gambra, and Goethe's astonishingly mistaken notion that he could have composed music for Faust, show how completely the enchantments of the new dramatic music upset the judgment of artists of eminent discernment. Meyerbeer was, people said (old gentlemen still ...
— The Perfect Wagnerite - A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring • George Bernard Shaw
... of "Representative American Short Stories," "The Book of the Short Story," the "Little French ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... a short story, "Makar Tchoudra," which was published by a provincial newspaper. It is a rather interesting work, but its interest lies more, frankly speaking, in what it promises than in what it actually gives. The subject is ...
— Twenty-six and One and Other Stories • Maksim Gorky
... letters and an embarrassment of gifts upon her dear TENNYSONS; the KEMBLE sisters, LOCKHART, THACKERAY himself, a score of great and (to the kindly chronicler) gracious personalities live again in her pages. I should add that the volume is rounded off by a short story, a late addition to the Miss Williamson series, which might be called a pot-boiler, were it not somehow incongruous to associate so gentle a flame with any such activities. Slight as it is, From Friend to Friend ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 21st, 1920 • Various
... courteous communication, let me say that had I seen the close of your short story, I should have grasped the situation more fully, and should doubtless have refrained from giving it ...
— Tales of Fantasy and Fact • Brander Matthews
... had so often wandered among these flowers, and fed with her own hands in those marble basins the small shining fishes of which she was so fond,—the youth in order to delay the moment of separation proposed to recite a short story or rather rhapsody of which this adored Sultana was the heroine. It related, he said, to the reconcilement of a sort of lovers' quarrel which took place between her and the Emperor during a Feast of Roses at Cashmere; and would remind the Princess of that difference between Haroun-al-Raschid ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... me because I never confided this to you before. But I have not told a single person until to-day, not even Mother or Mollie. Months before I came to Washington, just before school commenced, I saw a notice in a newspaper, saying that a prize would be given for a short story written by a schoolgirl between the ages of sixteen and eighteen. So, up in the little attic at Laurel Cottage, I wrote a story. I worked on it for days and days, and then I sent it off to the publisher. I was ashamed to tell any one that I had written it, and never ...
— The Automobile Girls At Washington • Laura Dent Crane
... nail is driven home, and before the hammer begins to bruise the wood. The art lies in discovering this moment of cessation and using it to the best advantage. That is the fascination of the real 'short story' as told by Hawthorne, or Poe, or Stevenson, or Cable, or De Maupassant, or Miss Jewett, or Margaret Deland. It reaches the point of interest and stops. The impression is not blurred. It is like a well-cut seal: small, but clear and ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... century were still read occasionally: Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, for example, and Dr. Johnson had enjoyed them, and Chesterfield, at a later period, has to point out to his son that Calprenede's Cassandra has become ridiculous. The short story, of which Mrs. Behn was the last English writer, was more or less replaced by the little sketches in the Spectator; and Defoe had shown the attractiveness of a downright realistic narrative of a series of adventures. But whatever precedents may be found, our ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen
... railroad constructed, a hat trimmed, or a book written, we ought to know which class of bachelors will serve our purpose best. Some one asked me just a few days ago to cite him to some man or woman who can write a prize-winning short story, but I couldn't decide whether to refer him to the bachelors of arts or the bachelors of pedagogy. I might have turned to the Litt.D.'s, but I didn't suppose they would care to bother with a little thing ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... been. Wherefore one must consider how and when and on whom and likewise where one exercises one's wit. By ill observing which matters one of our prelates did once upon a time receive no less shrewd a bite than he gave; as I will shew you in a short story. ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... pathos, as in "Morphia," he obtains his effects without the smallest appearance of effort. And I reserve a special word of praise for "My Lady of the Jasmine," and commend it to the notice of those pessimists who hold that only the French and the Americans can write a good short story. Thank the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug 15, 1917 • Various
... short story I had read once. It was by Gertrude Atherton, and at the time I had thought it the most harrowing story ever written. A woman had gone to sleep, young, beautiful, beloved. She had waked to find her hair grey, her hands old and veined. Twenty blank years of madness she had spent in a lunatic ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... "It's a short story," he continued, "and won't take many words. I warn't always what I am now. No, I was a man-o'-war's-man for many a year, and, though I say it myself, there warn't many in the service as knew their duty or did it better. But all that went ...
— Ran Away to Sea • Mayne Reid
... to shape modern journalism and modern every-day English style was large; but the achievement which has given him world-wide fame came late in life. In 1706 he had written a masterly short story, 'The Apparition of Mrs. Veal.' Its real purpose, characteristically enough, was the concealed one of promoting the sale of an unsuccessful religious book, but its literary importance lies first in the extraordinarily convincing mass of minute details which it casts ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... she was one of the women to whom California would some day point with pride? Deep in her singing heart she suspected that it was true. How it was to come about she could only guess. By her pen, of course. By some short story suddenly inspired, or by one of her flashing articles on the women's problems of the day. She was not a Shakespeare, not a George Eliot, but she had something for which the world ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... her geraniums, to make a short story of it, and left the two "conversationists," to wit, the angel Raphael and the gentleman,—there was but one gentleman in society then, you know,—to ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... deeply tragic in the short story of Keats's life. The seeds of consumption were in him; he felt the stirrings of a potent genius, but knew that he could not wait for it to ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... would like to inquire if the pupils of a big school, of which I am one, each send a short story, essay, poem, or a drawing to YOUNG PEOPLE, if the one the editors think the best would be published, with the ...
— Harper's Young People, April 6, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... variety of Maupassant's cynicism was just that variation of the artistic idea upon the temperament which puts the best finish upon work necessarily so limited, obliged to be so clenching, as the short story. Flaubert's gigantic dissatisfaction with life, his really philosophic sense of its vanity, would have overweighted a writer so thoroughly equipped for his work as the writer of "Boule de Suif" and "La Maison Tellier." Maupassant had no time, he allowed ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... the epitaphs, the work of Mr. Masters is mainly unimpressive. Yet I admire his ambition to write on various subjects and in various metres. Occasionally he produces a short story in verse, characterized by dramatic power and by austere beauty of style. The poem Boyhood Friends, recently published in the Yale Review, and quite properly included by Mr. Braithwaite in his interesting and valuable ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... irritated by the atmosphere of post-1914 into the excess post-pituitary state, the adventurous never-satiated avid pleasure hunter, in whom the craving for stimulation will stop at nothing. F. Scott Fitzgerald portrayed an exquisite specimen of the kind in his short story "The Jellybean," with a quasi-heroine of a good Southern family, built to be a high standard wife and mother, who drinks, swears, gambles, and finally marries on a dare. Modern post-pituitary woman is excitement mad and thrill chasing. The worst of it is that the resultant ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... cited as a classical modern example of precocity, but he was twenty-four when he wrote The Marrying of Anne Leete. Mr Henry James was twenty-eight before he had published a characteristic word. Mr Thomas Hardy at twenty-five had only printed a short story, and he was more than thirty when his first novel appeared. Mr Kipling came upon the public in 1886 without a preliminary stutter. Mr Kipling at twenty-two could write as craftily as Mr Kipling can write after nearly ...
— Rudyard Kipling • John Palmer
... book for children, find a short story and put it into dialogue form. It will be wise to select a story that already contains a ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... examined critically—and imitated—for its excellence in centering the reader's interest upon the football hero, Oliphant,—a stroke which gives the article almost a short story unity of impression. The writer's shift from the game and the crowd to Oliphant is somewhat rough—note, for instance, "We are as loyal a Democrat as anybody else, but NO,"—but otherwise the story ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... afraid to tell the story—reading it aloud will not be half so effective. Select a fable or a short story first. Read it carefully, and then shut the book and think about it. Be sure you have the plot in your mind, make the hero and the other characters seem very real to yourself, picture the scenes vividly in your mind's eye, and you ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... clever and beautiful daughter of the first Populist governor of Kansas, was a well-known essayist and short story writer. For many years she was one of the editors of the ...
— Kansas Women in Literature • Nettie Garmer Barker
... think that your best Line will be thorow the whole length of France to Marseilles, and thence by Sea to Genoa, whence the passage into Tuscany is as Diurnal as a Gravesend Barge: I hasten as you do to Florence, or Siena, the rather tell you a short story from the interest you have given ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... give some account of the places in which Mr. Stockton's stories and novels were written, and their environments. Some of the Southern stories were written in Virginia, and, now and then, a short story elsewhere, as suggested by the locality, but the most of his work was done under his own roof-tree. He loved his home; it had to be a country home, and always had to have a garden. In the care of a garden and in driving, he found his two ...
— The Captain's Toll-Gate • Frank R. Stockton
... shall represent the literature of our time at its best. Among the contributors are Sir James Barrie, who writes in the character of an Eton boy; Mr. Arnold Bennett, with a series of notes and impressions; Mr. Austin Dobson, with a characteristic poem; F. Anstey, with a short story; Mr. John Galsworthy, with a fanciful sketch; Mr. Maurice Hewlett, with a light poem; Mr. Hugh Walpole, with a cathedral town comedy; "Saki," with a caustic satire on the discursive drama; Mr. Stephen ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... the first page of the paper was an announcement to the effect that the Visitor would give two prizes—one of one hundred dollars for the best short story, and one of fifty dollars for the best poem submitted to it anonymously. Three well-known gentlemen of the city would act as judges, and the names of the successful contestants would be published upon the ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... James's Gazette and found that they paid two pounds instead of the guinea of the Globe, and again, naturally enough, devoted most of my attention to the St. James's Gazette. From the essay or literary paper, I somehow got into the habit of the short story, and did a good many of these, still for the St. James's, till in the autumn of 1890, I wrote a tale called "The Double Return." Well, Oscar Wilde asked: "Are you the author of that story that fluttered the dovecotes? I thought it was very good." But: it did flutter the dovecotes, ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen
... time for reading good, wholesome stories. Take the boys out into the woods where they can squat under a big tree, or if the day is warm seek the cool shelter of the tent and while the boys are lying down read a short story or several chapters of a story like "Dr. Grenfell's Parish," by Norman Duncan, "Just Boys," by Mary Buell Wood, "Some Boys I Know," "Chapel Talks," or "The Story of Good Will Farm," by George W. Hinckley. If the ...
— Camping For Boys • H.W. Gibson
... precede Lesson 30 we suggest that the teacher break up a short story of one or two paragraphs into simple sentences, making some of these transposed, some interrogative, and some exclamatory. The pupils may be required to copy these, to underline the subject and the predicate, and to tell, in answer to suggestive questions, what some ...
— Graded Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... unmistakable drift of fiction is toward the short story, and the carefully edited newspaper may hold the ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... master of the short story our country has known found his inspiration and produced his best work in California. It is now nearly forty years since "The Luck of Roaring Camp" appeared, and a line of successors, more or less worthy, ...
— The Case of Summerfield • William Henry Rhodes
... of its absurdity; and it would have been impossible better to retort the wild charges of misrepresentation, in which it is hard to suppose that even Freeman himself believed, than by the simple words, "It is true that I substitute a story in English for a story in Latin, a short story for a long one, and a story in a popular form for a story in a scholastic one." In short, Froude wrote a style which every scholar loves, and every pedant hates. With a light touch, but a touch ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... "Moments of Meditation" page, conducted by the Reverend Edwin T. Philpotts; a "Moments Among the Masters" page, consisting of assorted chunks looted from the literature of the past, when foreheads were bulgy and thoughts profound, by Mr. Wilberfloss himself; one or two other pages; a short story; answers to correspondents on domestic matters; and a "Moments of Mirth" page, conducted by an alleged humorist of the name of B. Henderson Asher, which is about the most painful production ever served up ...
— Psmith, Journalist • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse |
